7

FISHER HAS TO bellow Grisby’s name a half dozen times before he comes upstairs, and when he does there’s something furtive about him, something about the jerk-jerks of his head and the way his hands keep retreating to his pockets. Fisher snaps, “What the fuck—didn’t you hear me?” and Grisby snaps back, “Hey man, what the fucking fuck—you don’t have to be like that.” He slides his hand over the edge of the desk then looks about him as though he’s just noticed the smell. “What the hell’s that stink?”

Fisher can barely speak. He swallows against the taste of vomit in his mouth and lets himself down on Bree’s bed. It squeaks under his weight. “In the bathroom,” he says at last. “Christ—it’s fucking awful.”

When Grisby comes out he’s dangling the black L of a gun from one finger. “Guess Mister Deadguy won’t miss his piece now,” he says, “and I know someone who’ll buy it. This baby’s gonna boost my Hawaii fund.”

“Fuck it, Grisby, put it back,” and Fisher stares down at his boots on the carpet. His fingers grab hold of his hair and pull until it hurts.

“Two birds with one stone. Guess we know why your little girl didn’t wanna hang around waiting for you to show up. Mom and step-daddy are away so she has a little fun, only things don’t go the way she wants with this guy, you know, maybe he—”

Fisher raises his head. “Don’t be a moron—that’s Brian. That’s her step-dad.”

Grisby lets out a strange whoop. “Holy shit. Naked in her bathroom, oh man, what sort of a twisted place is this?” He slaps his leg. “This is bad—fucking bad. Well I guess we know why she called you and not the cops. Man!”

“Shut the fuck up. Get it? Shut the fuck up!”

“They’ll just send her to juvie. It’s not like it’s going to completely ruin her life. Hell, maybe they’ll believe it was self-defense and let her off. Won’t be hard—something bad must’ve been going down if he was naked in there.” Grisby steps back with one hand up in surrender. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m just telling it like I see it.”

“You’re seeing it all wrong,” Fisher bellows, then his voice catches. He lets his head sink and he closes himself into the darkness of his folded arms. His breath heaves in and out, over and over, as though this is just the way of the world, that one man should be sitting on his daughter’s bed breathing while another—a stupid, self-righteous, uptight shit, but still—lies naked and dead a few yards away in her bathroom.

Grisby’s got it all wrong, he tells himself. All wrong. But he can’t help hearing Bree’s voice all tangled up saying, Brian’s going fucking ape-shit, and What a fucking mess. I don’t know what I’ve done. So where’s Jan? Did she head down to Anchorage on her own? Brian would have been here with Bree, buzzed and naked. Why hadn’t she just locked the door against him? Had he shown her the gun to scare her? Christ. Fisher shakes his head to clear it, shakes it again though it hurts like hell.

“It wasn’t like that,” he says at last. “It couldn’t have been.”

For once Grisby doesn’t say anything, just looks at him from under the edge of his fur hat, his eyes big behind their glasses, then turns away.

Fisher says, “How the fuck does this make any sense, really?” His voice creaks and fades, and it’s all he can do to add, “Goddamnit.”

He wishes he hadn’t taken that Vicodin. The calm that it sent through him earlier has drained away and his thoughts can’t quite fit themselves together. He tells himself, if only his head were clear he’d understand everything and know what to do. He remembers the times his phone rang and how easy it would have been to slip it out of his pocket and say, “Yup?” Bree would have been on the other end, all frantic, true, but he could have asked what the hell was going on and she’d have told him, and none of this would have happened.

Only, it’s too late for that.

Grisby’s got the gun clenched under his arm and he’s skipping those quick hands of his over everything. They tap-tap their way along the edge of Bree’s desk, and lift papers, and fast-touch earbuds that turn out to be attached to nothing, sniffing out what might be hidden beneath slippery magazines and flaccid T-shirts, until Fisher hisses at him, “Just stop with that, OK? We need to think.”

“Think? I’ve already done my thinking. There’s some sweet stuff in this place that Mr Step-Dad’s not gonna miss.” Grisby’s face is a little shiny, and no wonder when he’s still got his hat on and his parka zipped up.

Fisher kneads his knuckles into his eyes so hard the lids pop and smack. “Oh great: so it’s going to look like a burglary that went wrong, and you’re going to be the dumb-shit who did it and have a murder hanging over you too?”

“But just think—it won’t be Bree they’re looking for. Everybody wins.”

“Everybody wins?” he says quietly, and looks up at Grisby. “It’ll be you they’re looking for, and me too. Christ.” He sniffs. His nose is stuffed up. He yanks a tissue from his pocket and blows hard. That’s a mistake because the smells from the bathroom—the blood, the sour smells of vomit and urine—are sharper now. Familiar, too, making him think of buckets of soapy water and scouring brushes and bleach, because years ago he cleaned up messes as bad as this at the motel his dad and Ada run. A woman murdered by her boyfriend, and after the police left Ada sent Fisher along to fix up the room. Perhaps that’s why the idea comes to him. “We’ll get rid of him and take care of this mess. There’ll be no reason for the cops to look for Bree. No body, no murder, no murder suspect, nothing but a guy who’s taken off and not told anyone.”

Grisby’s mouth pulls wide. He lifts both hands, the gun swinging from one of them. “Whoa now, I can’t be cleaning up that shit.”

“But you want to take that gun and sell it? And whatever the hell you’ve got in your pockets? Think about it: stuff from a house where a guy’s been found shot dead? Oh yeah, real smart.” Grisby’s looking past him, but Fisher sees his jaw tighten.

“Christ, man, fucking Christ.”

“We’ll take him out someplace and dump him.”

“That’s your brilliant idea? Come breakup, those fuckheads who like hunting and fishing and crap are gonna be out. Someone’s gonna find him.”

“That’s months away. For now, what I need is time to find Breehan before she digs herself in any worse.” He forces himself to his feet. How far away the carpet is, how insubstantial this house, with its windows looking out onto the darkness. A dumb idea, to think that such a place could keep anyone safe.